5 FiveLetterWords
Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess B tier for first-turn info

SPIRE

Yes, SPIRE was the Wordle answer on January 15, 2023 (Wordle #575).

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /spaɪə//ˈspaɪ.ə//ˈspaɪ.ɚ/

Noun

A young shoot of a plant; a spear.

Noun

Any of various tall grasses, rushes, or sedges, such as the marram, the reed canary-grass, etc.

Verb

to sprout, to send forth the early shoots of growth; to germinate.

Verb

To grow upwards rather than develop horizontally.

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Etymology

From Middle English spire, spyre, spier, spir, from Old English spīr, from Proto-Germanic *spīrō, *spīrǭ (“peak; point; tip; stalk”). Cognate with Dutch spier, German Low German Spier, German Spier, Spiere, Danish spir, Norwegian spir and spire, Swedish spira, Icelandic spíra.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

One syllable Say it SPYR.

Rhymes with SHIRE SKIER AFIRE SWIRE QUIRE

In a sentence

The spire of the cathedral collapsed.
© tatoeba.org contributor AlanF_US (CC BY 2.0 FR)
A church spire could be seen in the distance.
© tatoeba.org contributor ToxicFriu (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use SPIRE in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 95.5% of possible answers.

Open Solver with SPIRE Open Word Finder

Wordle status

A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.

Playable guess

Yes

Included in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.

Possible answer

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

Used once

Past Wordle answer: January 15, 2023 (#575).

See the full page for that puzzle: January 15, 2023 (#575).

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

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How verification and withdrawal work

The answer word and timezone are used transiently to verify this page, then discarded. The receipt prevents duplicate submissions and lets this browser withdraw later; anyone with that token can withdraw, so keep browser-data exports private. Read the full privacy details.

How SPIRE performs as a guess

SPIRE is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 87.1% of games, misses completely in 12.9%, and leaves about 107 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,001 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.60 guesses in games solved within six turns.

Try your feedback pattern

Tap the tiles to match your feedback, then see the ranked follow-up guesses.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

S___E S in the 1st position and E in the 5th position S__R_ S in the 1st position and R in the 4th position _P__E P in the 2nd position and E in the 5th position SP_RE S in the 1st position, P in the 2nd position, R in the 4th position, and E in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in SPIRE.

First-turn measures

All four describe SPIRE used as an opening guess. Entropy is the same idea as “avg ruled out” on a log scale: a higher number means the guess splits the possible answers into more, smaller groups.

5.38 Entropy (bits)
107 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
95.5% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SPIRE performed in the previous complete opener benchmark, against its captured answer snapshot. These research figures are separate from today's solver recommendations. See the data page for the method.

3.60 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#1,001 Rank among openers
Opening with SPIRE left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.60 average. It ranks #1,001 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
96
3 guesses
970
4 guesses
1,083
5 guesses
182
6 guesses
20

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EIRS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
87%
Green tile
41%
All gray
13%

Example solver route

R O A T E
P R I S M
S P I R E

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches SPIRE in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

SPIRE can come back 130 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

307 answers
191 answers
160 answers
152 answers
131 answers
114 answers
99 answers
64 answers
58 answers
56 answers
53 answers
49 answers
45 answers
34 answers
33 answers
33 answers
31 answers
30 answers
28 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
25 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
19 answers

Letter-value totals

Base letter-value totals for SPIRE; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.

Scrabble

S1P3I1R1E1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.

Try next

TONAL LEANT BARON OATER ANTIC EAGLE

Strategy after playing SPIRE

What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to SPIRE.

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SPIRE:

13% chance
Suggested:
TONAL
8% chance
Suggested:
LEANT
7% chance
Suggested:
BARON

Follow-ups for common patterns

Ranked follow-up guesses for the 10 most common feedback patterns.

12.9% →
TONAL 5.78 bits
8.0% →
LEANT 5.25 bits
6.7% →
BARON 5.02 bits
6.4% →
OATER 4.22 bits
5.5% →
ANTIC 4.97 bits
4.8% →
EAGLE 4.49 bits
4.2% →
COALY 4.70 bits
2.7% →
COALY 4.23 bits
2.4% →
BLAST 4.52 bits
2.3% →
PULPY 4.70 bits

Research on SPIRE

Game-tree analysis and word research for SPIRE, with an explanation for each figure.

Optimal play

Opening with SPIRE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.62 guesses and ranks #527 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with SPIRE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.60, at or below the proven-optimal 3.62, because the two figures score different answer lists.

These figures come from exhaustive game-tree search and are exact for the NYT lists of July 2023 (3,158 answers). They do not use the site's working answer pool.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SPIRE sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 10, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 76 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.4 of 5).

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).